^nit)crs»ifg of |l6clai6c 

COMMEMORATION ADDRESS 

192 I 

Engineering and the 
University 



BY 



PROFESSOR R. W. CHAPMAN 



Adelaide: THE HASSELL PRESS 

1921 



Itniiicr^ifg of ^belaibe 

COMMEMORATION ADDRESS 

192 I 

Engineering and the 
University 



BY .rt'- 

PROFESSOR R. W. CHAPMAN 



Adelaide: THE HASSELL PRESS 
1921 






4^ -Vx •c-ytA*.*-^^ 

Oct- ij, i<^ v-v 



ENGINEERING AND THE 
UNIVERSITY 



Engineering- is the Cinderella among the professions. 
You will remember that Cinderella was not only the 
youngest among the sisters, but she it was who was the 
maid-of-all-work while they got all the education and all 
the fine clothes and went out to balls and parties, until 
that happy time arrived when she married the Prince. 
And so from the very beginnings of Universities it was 
thought right and proper that they should undertake the 
training of lawyers, physicians and surgeons, clergymen, 
teachers and philosophers. All of these belonged to 
professions which were recognized as deserving of that 
training in knowledge and culture that only the Universities 
could give, but for the men who were to be engaged in the 
practical work of building roads and bridges, reservoirs 
and canals, and otherwise administering to the physical 
wants of the people, the Universities for a long while had 
no place. 

It seems rather strange that this should have been so,. 
because if we go back far enough we find that the smiths, 
the workers in iron, who were the forerunners of the modern 
engineers, occupied a place of great importance in all 
primitive communities. They supplied tools for the 
carpenter, spades and hoes for the farmer, and the 
keys, bolts and ironwork for the castle. The community 
depended upon them for the weapons of the chase and for 
the weapons of war. They made the bills and battle-axes, 
the tips for the bowmen's arrows, and the swords and 



2 ENGINEERING AND 

spear-heads for the men-at-arms. "More important than 
all, they forged the mail-coats and cuirasses of the chiefs, 
and welded their swords, on the temper and quality of 
which life, honour, and victory in battle depended. ' ' There 
is small wonder then that in Angio-Saxon times the person 
of the smith was protected by a double penalty. He was 
treated as an officer of the highest rank, and awarded the 
first place in precedency. After him ranked the maker of 
mead, and then came the physician. In the royal court of 
Wales he sat in the great hall with the King and Queen, 
next to the domestic chaplain. 

A story is told of a Highland clan Avhose smith 
committed some act of robbery on a neighbouring clan, 
for which his execution was demanded. The chief, however, 
explained that he could not afford to dispense with the 
smith, but he generously offered to hang two weavers in 
his stead. 

But the art of the smith, in those days and for long 
afterwards, was purely empirical. It could be successfully 
learned and practised by men who could neither read nor 
write. It had no basis of scientific knowledge. With the 
growth of requirements due to the development of large 
towns, some members of the great Smith family became 
manufacturers, as at Sheffield and Birmingham ; others 
enlarged the scope of their activities to include more of 
what we now understand by engineering work. Masons 
became bridge builders. But the fountains of science, from 
which the young engineering giant was to be nourished, 
were as yet unknown at the time when the first 
Universities were established. At the University of Paris 
the four faculties were Theology, Law, Medicine, and 
Philosophy, which were represented as the four streams of 
learning that were like unto the rivers of Paradise. But 
in this Paradise science had no part, and of practical 
applications of science there could be none. A well-known 



THE UNIVERSITY 3 

definition of civil engineering states that it is "the art of 
directing the great sources of power in nature for the use 
and convenience of man. " As a broad definition this would 
be difficult to improve upon, and it is obvious that until 
science had developed far enough to be able to enunciate 
the laws governing the forces of nature it was impossible 
to have anything but empirical rules to govern engineering 
design and construction. 

And so Engineering remained a trade, while Medicine 
and Law advanced in dignity and status. It became a 
tradition in Engineering that - the only school worth 
anything was the school of practical experience. Even 
long after the sciences of Mechanics and Hydraulics had 
become well established courses at Universities, such studies 
were neglected by -engineers whose hard practical training 
tended to give them little sympathy with the abstruse and 
often impractical and unreal problems commonly discussed 
by the mathematicians. From this position, at the end of 
the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Engineering 
was rescued by a series of eminent men who, while they 
were all trained in the first instance as tradesmen, 
distinguished themselves by the zeal with which they 
assimilated scientific knowledge from any source available 
to them. 

Thus Telford, nicknamed by his friend Southey 
"Pontifex Marimus" and the "Colossus of Roads," one 
of the first of the irou bridge-builders, started life as a 
working mason. When still on the first rungs of the ladder 
he so successfully climbed, he wrote in one of his letters : 
"I am not contented unless I can give a reason for every 
particular method or practice which is pursued. Hence I 
am now very deep in Chemistry. The mode of making 
mortar in the best way led me to inquire into the nature 
of lime. Having, in pursuit of that inquiry, looked into 
some books on Chemistry, I perceived the field was 



4 ENGINEERING AND 

boundless ; but that to assign satisfactory reasons for many 
mechanical processes required a general knoAvledge of that 
science. I have therefore borroAved a MS. copy of Dr. 
Black's Lectures. I have bought his ' Expeririients on 
Magnesia and Quick Lime/ and also Fourcroy's Lectures, 
translated from the French by one Mr. Elliot, of Edinburgh, 
And I am determined to study the subject with unwearied 
attention until I attain some accurate knowledge of 
chemistry, which is of no less use in the practice of the 
arts than it is in that of medicine. ' ' Such persistence and 
perseverance could not but attain success, and the result 
is to be seen to-day in the lasting qualities, that have been 
the admiration of succeeding engineers, of the lime concretes-. 
in the canals and other structures built by Telford. Both 
Fairbairn and George Stephenson received their firsi 
training at a colliery at Newcastle. Later in life, when 
Fairbairn had become a man of world-Avide reputation as 
an engineer, he was elected President of the Institute of 
Mechanical Engineers at a meeting held at Newcastle, the 
scene of his work as a boy, and in the course of his address 
he said that had it not been for the opportunities for 
self-education that Newcastle offered, opportunities that 
we should think very small now, and the use of the library 
at North Shields, he believed he should not have been there 
to address them. "Being self-taught, but with some little 
ambition, and a determination to improve himself, he was 
now enabled to stand before them with some pretensions to 
mechanical knowledge, and the persuasion that he had been 
a useful contributor to practical science and objects 
connected with mechanical engineering." 

But the methods and reasoning by which such men 
arrived at their practical designs could not be expected tO' 
coincide with the methods of the academic exponents of 
the principles of mechanics, and it is hardly surprising tov 
find Todhunter, in his History of the Theory of Elasticity,, 



THE UNIVERSITY 5 

writing- with reference to the papers written before the 
Institution of Civil Engineers in the period 1850-1860 : 

"The. scientist stands aghast at the great mechanical 
results which have been obtained often by a defective, 
sometimes by a false theory. Perhaps it is only a con- 
sciousness of the large 'factor of safety' used which makes 
a railway journey endurable for a scientist after a perusal 
of some of the technical papers published in this decade." 

Todhunter was probably seeking in those papers for 
results that it was not the aim of the writers to produce, 
and with all his scientific knowledge he would have been 
quite incapable of doing Avhat these men did. The fact 
remains that they did build bridges that have carried heavy 
traffic safely for a century, that they did build railroads 
and locomotives which served their purpose well, that they 
did construct effective roads and harbours, and if in many 
cases the design was neither the best possible nor the most 
economical, the engineers at least generally erred on the 
safe side. 

But I will not attempt to trace the development through 
those decades of last century when the question of Theory 
versus Practice was so vehemently debated. The matter 
has been settled by the decisive logic of events. The 
innumerable applications of scientific discovery to practical 
engineering, and especially the rapid growth of Electrical 
Engineering, have made it absolutely necessary that a 
modern engineer Avorthy of the name should have some 
knowledge of science. The older method of training for 
the 3^oung engineer was that he should be articled to an 
engineer in practice, and, apart from the training he 
received in office and works, he got no scientific training 
unless he were enthusiastic enough to attend evening classes 
in some technical institution. This has proved to be 
entirely insufficient for modern requirements. And so it 
has come about that although Engineering Schools at 



6 ENGINEERING AND 

Universities are still for the most part less than fifty years 
old, they are now associated with almost all Universities. 
In many the Engineering School is, numerically at any rate,, 
the strongest school of all. The Queensland University 
began with Schools in Arts, Science, and Engineering, and 
none in Medicine nor Law. So did the University of 
Western Australia. Even the Institution of Civil Engineers,, 
a body of practical professional men, for long holding very 
conservative views with regard to methods of training of 
Engineers, has for some years recommended a minimum, 
course of three years at the Engineering School of a 
Universit}^, the recommendation being unanimously adopted 
by the committee appointed to report upon the subject. 

The first country to establish schools of advanced 
teaching in Engineering and Technical Science was France. 
The military needs of the country, felt in the years 
preceding the French Revolution, resulted in the establish- 
ment by the Government of a number of schools that are 
still in active work at the present time. The School of 
Bridges and Roads (Ecole des Fonts et Chaussees) was 
founded in 1747, the School of Mines (Ecoles des Mines) 
in 1783. It was not till much later that the first British 
School of Engineering was established at University College,. 
London, in 1828. Rankine was appointed Professor of 
Mechanical Science at Glasgow in 1855. Since then 
Engineering Schools have been established at one University 
after another, until to-day even Cambridge has its Engi- 
neering laboratories and a Mechanical Science Tripos, and 
Oxford its Department of Engineering Science. 

In the address given by the Governor, Sir Drummond 
Jervois, at the laying of the foundation-stone of the 
Adelaide University in 1879, he said: ''But the engineer, 
whether he is to be a railway engineer, or mining 
engineer, or a mechanical engineer, whether he learns 
classics or not, must, in addition to a knowledge 



THE UNIVERSITY 7 

of mathematics, be instructed in the practical engi- 
neering science connected with the branch of the 
profession which he intends to follow. I may here 
remark that the present staff of the University does not 
provide for this kind of instruction, but this deficiency, 
I trust, will ere long be supplied. ' ' "We were a good many 
years before we attempted to make good the deficiencjr 
referred to by His Excellency, but having now put our 
hands to the plough I trust that the vigour of our progress, 
will atone for the length of our neglect. 

The first object of an Engineering School at a University 
is to provide that foundation of scientific knowledge whicli 
is necessary to the young man entering upon the engineering 
profession. We may state at the outset that no University 
or Technical School in the world can furnish the complete 
training for an engineer. The scientific laboratories of a 
University cannot possibly give the same kind of experience- 
as that obtained in practical workshops or on the construc- 
tion of large works. It is not sufficient for a man to know 
how to test cement and gravel in order that he may deter- 
mine in what proportions to mix them so as to obtain the 
densest possible concrete ; he must know how to handle his 
materials, what are the best appliances for the purpose, and 
how to order his men when he has to make a few hundred 
cubic yards of it. It is not enough that he should be able 
to compute the stresses on the various members of a bridge,, 
and even to produce a creditable design; he must know 
how to erect it without killing his men and without ruining' 
the contractor. If he is a mechanical engineer, he must 
have that practical knowledge of workshop methods that 
will enable him to design an engine or machine that will 
not only work when made, but which can be constructed at 
a reasonable cost. If he is a civil engineer, he may be 
required to determine the appliances to be used, and tO' 
order the work of large gangs of men in the shifting of 



S ENGINEERING AND 

thousands of cubic yards of earth or rock in cutting, dam, 
or embankment, and it has to be done to leave a margin of 
profit. If he is a mining engineer, he must determine safe 
working methods of extracting ore from a mine whose 
•existence depends upon the ore being won at less cost than 
the value of the contents. In all of these instances the cost 
■of the operation is a first consideration, and it is obvious 
that it is only by actual experience in the handling of large 
numbers of men and big quantities of materials that any 
man can become competent. Clearlj^ this kind of experience 
is not to be got at a University. University lectures may 
assist by setting out certain general guiding principles, but 
proficiency in such work is only to be obtained bj^ actually 
•doing it. If this Avere all that a University could do it 
Avould not be worth while to have an Engineering School 
at all. 

But, on the other hand, there is a kind of knowledge 
•equally essential that the University can give and that 
cannot so well *be gained on practical works. It is the 
knowledge based upon the experiments and deductions of 
the great scientific men who have preceded us, and the 
outlook that is gained by an insight into their methods of 
inquiry. A man using only the materials gained in his 
own limited experience, no matter how full it may be, can 
at the best build but a small and feeble structure. But if 
he takes the trouble, first of all, before he builds it, to climb 
to the top of the great hill that has been raised in the course 
of generations by the great men of the past, the army of 
scientific workers of all nations, then, building his own 
edifice on top of that, a man may raise himself to an 
elevation that shall command the broadest possible outlook. 
If, however, he build upon the plain below, his view will 
always be narrow and limited. 

Take as an illustration the case of an engineer working 
with that great building material of recent times, reinforced 



THE UNIVERSITY 9 

.concrete. Concrete alone is a material strong to resist 
■compression, but weak in tension. It is a simple idea to 
reinforce it bv embedding steel rods in it so as to compensate 
for this defect and enable the combined material to resist 
stresses of both kinds. But to actnally carry the idea ont 
it is necessary to knoAV the character of the stresses to which 
the strncture is subjected, so that the steel rods may be 
placed in such directions, in such places, and in the right 
• quantities as to be able to supply the tensile strength 
required, and so that steel may not be Avasted by being 
placed where it is not wanted. It is safe to say that no 
man can do this from his own experience alone. The 
construction of the graceful arch bridges of reinforced 
concrete, now so common, and of the large variety of other 
structures in which the same material is used, has been 
made possible only bj^ the application to the problem of 
methods of calculation based upon knowledge of the 
elasticity of materials that has been slowly gathered through 
many generations, and the theories developed have been 

■ checked at every stage by elaborate tests and experiments, in 
which engineers have applied the methods of experimental 
science. The great development in the use of this structural 
material would haA^e been quite impossible otherwise. 

At the discussion before the Institute of Civil Engineers 
on a paper describing the bridge erected over the Zambesi 
River, just below the famous Victoria Falls, a story Avas 
told of a chief of the Barotse, one of the neighbouring 
tribes, who came almost daily and sat down and watched 
the building of the gossamy Aveb of steel that Avas gradually 
extended OA^er the gorge, 400 ft. aboA'e the AA-ater beloAv. He 
said it Avas impossible that a small thing like that could 
carry anything, and that it Avould be dangerous to AA'alk 

■ over it. When it Avas completed, and he found that a train 
could go over it, he said it AA^as the finger of God that kept 
it up. And there is a sense in Avhich the old chief Avas 



10 ENGINEERING AND 

right. For the finger of God is surely the compelling power- 
of the laws of Nature, and the erection of such a structure 
is made possible only by the accurate calculation of the 
forces acting upon each member of the bridge in accordance 
with those laws; a computation that no man could make 
from the knowledge won by his own experience alone. 

There are some branches of Engineering, such as. 
Electrical Engineering, that have obviously been almost 
entirely dependent for their advancement upon scientific 
investigation, but there are no branches that can progress, 
without it. James Watt, who was trained as a maker of 
scientific instruments, showed keen appreciation of this fact 
when he completed his inventions relating to the steam 
engine by the invention of the indicator. This is the 
scientific tool that enables the performances of engines tO' 
be weighed and measured, and the progress of both steam 
and gas engine since Watt's time has been largely due to- 
its use. Indeed such progress would have been impossible 
without it. Yet a recent editorial in "Engineering" 
lamented the fact that even now some British makers of 
engines will persist in acting as though the indicator did 
not exist, with results very harmful to British trade. The 
relation of the indicator to the steam engine typifies that 
between scientific method and engineering generally. It is 
everywhere the active agent that stimulates progress. Even 
in branches of Engineering commonly regarded as purely 
practical arts, such as road engineering, experience has 
shown that the most successful engineers are those who 
apply to the practical problems minds having knowledge of 
related sciences and trained in scientific method, and im 
several American Universities special Degree courses are 
now given for Road Engineers. Every branch of Engineer- 
ing has the same story to tell. You all know what a vital 
force was scientific engineering in the great war. The 
Germans had the first advantage, largelj' because for a. 



THE UNIVERSITY lH 

generation they had devoted the energies of a large- 
proportion of their scientific men to the devices of military 
engineering. And we did not beat them until we had 
proved that we possessed knowledge as profound, and 
powers to apply it, at least as keen as theirs. 

Even more important than any direct knowledge that a 
young man gets from University studies is the viewpoint 
that he gains. The outlook of a man with a scientific 
training is entirely different from that of the man with 
practical experience as his only guide. He is best equipped 
to take the broad view and subjugate petty personal feelings 
in a search for the knowledge necessary to the solution of a 
practical problem. Some years ago a young graduate of 
this University obtained a position as surveyor on a large 
mine. For two or three years his duties took him into every 
corner of the underground workings, and, although his 
actual experience of such work was small — nothing at all 
compared with that of the underground manager, who had 
bc-en all his life at similar work — he formed the opinion 
tha^. the methods of working and the whole organization of 
the mine could be greatly improved. Having carefully 
thought out his plans, he put his suggestions forward, only 
to have them laughed at. But he persisted, and as the 
mining operations were then a source of great worry to the 
general manager, he was at last listened to, and was given 
the task of conducting a special enquiry into some of the 
problems involved. The ultimate result was that the mine 
entered upon a new life, with permanent improvements 
economically, and with a definite advance in reduction of 
risk of operation. He succeeded in making a marked 
reduction in working costs, he turned a dangerous mine 
into a safe one, and made a notable advance in methods of 
mine organization. He did not learn those methods at the 
University, but I believe that he did get the outlook which 
enabled him to view the problem in a new light largely as. 



22 ENGINEERING AND 

the result of his University studies. Yet the character of 
the work would usually be regarded as essentially the 
province of the purely practical man. 

The value of trained engineers to the State was 
recognized by the late Hon. J. H. Angas, who founded the 
scholarship that bears his name for the express purpose of 
'enabling young civil engineers to obtain training and 
experience abroad, in order that thej^ may be better 
equipped to assist in the development of the State. The 
scholarship has been awarded biennially since 1888, the 
isuccessful candidate receiving £^00 a year for two years to 
enable him to benefit by experience in England or America, 
but unfortunatel}", of all the past recipients, only three are 
now in South Australia. It certainly is much to be 
regretted that we do not induce a greater proportion of the 
Angas scholars, who represent the pick of our engineering 
graduates, to come back to South Australia, and so carry 
out the intentions of the founder of the scholarship. So 
much of the civil engineering work of the State is under 
the control of the Government that this can only be secured 
by their help and co-operation, but surely no better recruits 
could be got for the service. Last year the total expenditure 
of the State was £6,450,000, more than one-third of which 
was spent on railways, harbours, roads, irrigation, and 
other engineering undertakings. This is a verj^ large sum, 
and unless we have thoroughly efficient engineering depart- 
ments hundreds of thousands of pounds may easily be 
wasted and few know anything of it. The proper way to 
secure this efficiency is to start with the young men entering 
the service. Either they must enter properly qualified, or 
they must become qualified before they can get beyond a 
certain stage. But it is an anomaly in several of the States 
that Avhilst Parliaments have for many years given 
considerable grants in aid of various forms of technical 
■education, and by speech and deed such training is 



THE UNIVERSITY 13 

recognized by all political parties as of the greatest value 
to the State, yet little practical encouragement is given,. 
either to the yonng men already in or to those about to enter 
Government engineering departments, to make the effort 
necessary to benefit from the instruction supplied. The 
new regulations about to be introduced into the South 
Australian service by the present Government will improve 
the present conditions in this State considerably, but a still 
closer co-operation between the University and the Govern- 
ment engineering departments is desirable. Other things 
being equal, experience in all countries has amply proved 
that the trained man is bound to make the best engineer in 
the long run, and there is every reason why the Government 
service should have recruits of the highest efficiency. 

But besides the training of the young engineer in the 
foundation principles of his profession, there is another 
object of a University engineering school that is of even 
equal importance. Indeed, some of our big University 
brothers have been telling us that unless we keep this object 
well to the fore we cannot be regarded as a real University 
at all. It is that the University School should itself be a 
centre of inspiration for the engineering profession ; that 
it should be a place where original experimental work is 
always being carried on, where inventions are tried out, 
and where engineering firms may come for help in carrying- 
out tests and experiments to advance technical knowledge, 
and particularly to assist in the solution of engineering-^ 
problems of special importance to the State. 

All the large modern engineering and manufacturing 
corporations have realized the value of scientific research. 
In these times they could not hold a foremost position 
without it. In the U.S.A. more than fifty industrial 
concerns have established research laboratories on an 
extensive scale. The Eastman Kodak, General Electric,. 
American Rolling Mill Co., Detroit Edison Co., and others 



14 ENGINEERING AND 

spend as much as £20,000 to £60,000 a year on research 
work. In this State, oiir engineering and manufacturing 
enterprises are, as a rule, too small to be able to provide 
research departments of their own, and for that very reason 
a well-equipped University laboratory is of the more 
importance, for it could give assistance in many difficulties. 
During the war I visited a large workshop near 
Melbourne, where an attempt had been made to start in Aus- 
tralia the manufacture of copper tubes, then unobtainable 
from abroad. A plant was erected at a cost of several 
thousands of pounds, the very purest electrolytic copper, 
containing as much as 99.9 per cent, of pure copper, was 
purchased, expert workmen were engaged, but the tubes 
could not be drawn. For some reason the copper was not 
sufficiently ductile. For nine months experiments were 
tried, and a great deal of money was spent without success. 
As a last resort, a young Melbourne graduate was employed, 
who had given special attention to the examination of metals 
by the metallurgical microscope. He found that the slight 
impurity present consisted of oxygen united with the 
copper as an oxide. Cuprous oxide contains about 11 per 
■cent, of oxygen, and in this case it was present chiefly in 
the form of minute layers in between layers of pure copper, 
forming a structure known as the eutectic. The result was 
that although the oxygen formed less than 0.1 per cent; of 
the whole, the eutectic, in which the oxide was intimately 
woven, formed as much as 20 per cent, of the whole. Now 
cuprous oxide is not ductile, and the eutectic in consequence 
was a brittle structure. Moreover, it arranged itself round 
the boundaries of the pure copper crystals so as to destroy 
their cohesion. Here then was the cause of the trouble, 
and the problem was to destroy the structure of the eutectic. 
Experiment showed that this could be done by a special 
treatment that induced the oxide particles to form into 
iglobules, so that when the metal solidified it did so prac- 



THE UNIVERSITY 15 

tically as a pure metal with a few globules of oxide 
scattered throughout it. When this was done the tubes 
were drawn easily and well. Science succeeded where 
•experience had failed. 

This is an example of the kind of difficulty in which a 
Avell-equipped University laboratory might be of the 
greatest assistance to the manufacturing community. As it 
is, with our present limited resources, we do something, 
but much more would be possible if our equipment were 
.sufficient. To do this sort of thing efficiently requires, of 
course, laboratories, apparatus, and suitable assistance, and 
-all this costs money. Clearly the exuberant enthusiasm of 
the professor must be kept within bounds. We cannot 
expect the State of South Australia, with a population of 
less than half a million of people, and with the demands 
upon its revenue due to the vast area that it covers, can 
atford to provide the same facilities for research work that 
.are given at Manchester or Columbia. But that is no reason 
why we should do nothing. No one in touch with 
engineering practice will deny that there are plenty of 
problems that S.A. engineers would like to have solved, 
many of them, like that of our broAvn coals, being local 
problems that we can scarcely expect outsiders to solve 
for us. 

Let me illustrate the value to the nation of scientific 
research, combined with engineering invention, by a story 
from our own recent history. In 1905 Mr. A. G. M. Michell, a 
graduate in Engineering of Melbourne University, published 
the results of an elaborate mathematical investigation into 
the flow of lubricating oils under certain conditions. As 
the result of his mathematical work, which was of a very 
high-class character, he made certain remarkable deductions, 
which he verified by ingenious experiment. He deduced 
that it should be possible to construct a thrust bearing, 
•such as that required on the main propeller shaft of a ship, 
in which metallic contact of moving surfaces would be 



16 ENGINEERING AND 

entirely eliminated and the only frictional resistance would 
be that due to the viscosity of the oil used. He proceeded 
to apply his idea to the practical construction of thrust 
bearings, but, so revolutionary were his proposals, that it 
was not till the beginning of the war in 1914 that marine 
engineers could be persuaded to use them. Then they made 
rapid headway. The Admiralty adopted them, and now all 
new British warships, as Avell as most other new vessels, are 
fitted with Michell thrust bearings. In 1919 an application 
was made before the Chancery Court in England for 
rencAval of the patent rights, and was supported by the 
Admiralty. In granting the application, the judge stated 
that it was no exaggeration to describe the invention as an 
epoch-making one. The use of the gear-driven turbine, as 
it was practised in the Navy throughout the war, including 
its use in submarines, and as it is now being used in fast 
commercial vessels, was rendered possible only by the use 
of this type of bearing. It was given in evidence that its 
application to a battle cruiser resulted in a saving in initial 
cost of £38,000, and a further saving of 3 per cent, in the 
amount of coal used, as well as a reduction in the quantity 
of oil. The annual saving to the Navy alone in coal and oil 
was given as at least £800,000. It was a notable Australian 
contribution to the Allied cause in the great war. 

It is no exaggeration to say that the invention has not 
only enabled us to do something that Ave could not do before, 
but to the British nation it has resulted in the saving- 
altogether of millions of pounds worth of coal and oil. The 
direct monetary gain to the nation from this one invention 
has certainly been a great deal more than the whole of the 
money spent upon Melbourne University from its inception. 
Of course, the invention might still have been made had the 
Melbourne University not been in existence. But it is safe 
to say that the invention would not have been possible 
unless somehow or other Mr. Michell had had the 



THE UNIVERSITY 17 

opportunity to obtain a thorough training in mathematical 
science. 

That the provision of proper facilities for research may 
be an exceedingly profitable investment from a commercial 
point of view has been amply demonstrated by events. 
That it will be profitable to a young nation in a better sense 
I firmly believe. We have taken pride in the reniarkaljlc 
powers of self-reliance and initiative that were shown by 
our Australian soldiers in the great war. We perhai)s 
flatter ourselves that these are qualities that are bred in the 
clear skies and broad expanses of our Australian continent. 
As a nation in the making, we have reason to be proud and 
hopeful of the future when we see these qualities united 
with dauntless courage in tens of thousands of our youth. 
But we cannot develop the best spirit of self-reliance in the 
nation if we are for ever to depend upon other peoples to 
show us the way to progress and be content to simply 
follow them. We have our own problems that require their 
own solutions, and it should be our ambition to lead the 
way and not follow in the wake. The war is over, but the 
competition between nations continues. It cannot be 
diminished by Peace Conferences nor evaded by philan- 
thropic projects. It is the law of Nature, and if we would 
survive we must prove ourselves to be fit. We cannot do 
that if we neglect the development of the highest qualities 
of the human mind, the qualities upon which human 
progress has chiefly depended. 



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